TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team and its five FIA World Rally Championship contenders are set to put on a spectacular show on home roads when Rally Finland stages round 10 on July 30-August 2.

The fastest round of the WRC takes place in the forests of central Finland around the city of Jyväskylä, which are considered the spiritual home of rallying. Their smooth gravel roads containing frequent jumps and crests delight drivers and fans alike.

It is home ground too for TGR-WRT, which has its headquarters in Jyväskylä just three kilometres from the Rally Finland service park. The team has won seven of the eight editions it has contested, including a historic sweep of the top five positions one year ago – a feat achieved only once before in the WRC – led by a long-awaited first victory for hometown hero Kalle Rovanperä.

This year, TGR-WRT arrives home with a fresh new Finnish hero in Sami Pajari, who last week became the 17th driver from his country to win a round of the WRC with an impressive victory on similarly fast roads at Rally Estonia.

It means that all five of the team’s drivers have now won at least one rally this season. The quintet occupies the top five places in the drivers’ standings, covered by 47 points with five rounds remaining, and all five relish competing on the roads of Rally Finland.

Elfyn Evans leads the championship by 25 points and won Rally Finland with TGR-WRT in 2021 and 2023, making the Welshman one of only four foreign drivers to have triumphed on the event multiple times. His closest challenger Takamoto Katsuta learned his trade as a rally driver with the TGR WRC Challenge Program in Jyväskylä after moving from Japan and has twice finished on the podium of Rally Finland, coming third in 2023 and second last year.

Pajari’s Estonia win promoted him to third in the standings, 33 points from the lead. He finished fourth on his GR YARIS Rally1 debut in Finland in 2024 and fifth last year. Five points further back, nine-time world champion Sébastien Ogier is another two-time Rally Finland winner, his 2024 win coming 11 years after his first. Oliver Solberg finished a strong second to Pajari in Estonia to sit just nine points behind Ogier and is a previous WRC2 winner in Finland.

Team Principal Jari-Matti Latvala will once again drive his home event in a GR Yaris Rally2 car, co-driven by fellow former TGR-WRT driver Juho Hänninen.

A total of 13 GR Yaris Rally2 cars feature on the entry list, including that of the WRC2 championship leader Roope Korhonen (who narrowly beat Latvala to win the class one year ago) and fellow Finn Teemu Suninen, who both finished on the podium in Estonia. Other customer drivers lining up in WRC2 include Briton Gus Greensmith, Finland-based Australian Taylor Gill, young Finn Tuukka Kauppinen, Estonia’s Joosep Ralf Nõgene, Frenchman Adrien Mosca and Austrian Johannes Keferböck.

The TGR WRC Challenge Program will again be well represented in Jyväskylä, where many of its drivers are based. Yuki Yamamoto finished a fine fifth in WRC2 last year, including taking a maiden stage win shared with Latvala. Rally2 rookies Takumi Matsushita and Shotaro Goto will look to build upon solid WRC2 debuts in Estonia, where Jaspar Vaher showed stage-winning speed on home roads. Rio Ogata and Kanta Yanaguida will again drive Rally3 machinery in WRC3 while Tomiya Maekawa co-drives Finnish driver Jarkko Nikara.

The 75th anniversary edition of Rally Finland begins in the heart of Jyväskylä on Thursday evening with the traditional mixed-surface Harju stage, which is run again to close out Friday after two loops of stages in the forests north-east: the classic Laukaa is reversed and paired with returning Saarikas plus new Sydänmaa and Hoho tests. Saturday features familiar roads to the south-east with Parkkola, Västilä, Päijälä and Leustu all returning from last year. A new-look Himos-Jämsa stage – the longest of the rally at 30.02 kilometres – is run twice to form Sunday’s finale.